The court was hearing a plea by some petitioners belonging to economically weaker sections and planning to appear in CTET 2019.

A vacation bench comprising justices Indira Banerjee and Sanjiv Khanna issued notices to the Centre and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on the plea and asked them to respond to it by July 1, the next date of hearing.

The Supreme Court Thursday sought responses from the Centre and CBSE on a plea seeking ten per cent reservation for economically weaker sections in the Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET), 2019. A vacation bench comprising justices Indira Banerjee and Sanjiv Khanna issued notices to the Centre and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on the plea and asked them to respond to it by July 1, the next date of hearing.

The court was hearing a plea by some petitioners belonging to economically weaker sections and planning to appear in CTET 2019. The petitioners told the apex court that CBSE published an advertisement on January 23, 2019 for conducting CTET in which benefit of ten per cent reservation has not been given to candidates belonging to economically weaker sections of society.

“The CBSE published advertisement dated January 23, 2019 for conducting CTET, 2019 in which this (reservation) benefit has not been given to economically weaker section and therefore the present writ petition is being filed to make sure that people covered under economically weaker section are given similar benefit like other reserved category (SC, ST and OBC) starting with CTET-2019 advertisement,” their plea has said.

However, in the previous hearing on May 13, the court had said that for qualifying examinations there cannot be any reservation, as it comes into play only during admissions,, adding, “the notification for examination does not give any reservation to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe either.”

“For qualifying examinations there cannot be any reservation. This is wholly misconceived. This (CTET) is merely a qualifying examination. The issue of reservation will come up only at the time of admission,” the bench had said. The petitioners in their plea have challenged the notification issued by the CBSE on the ground of violation of rights guaranteed under the Constitution.

The Constitution (One hundred and third amendment) Act, 2019 was passed by Parliament and came into force on January 16. Under the amended Act, the Centre has provided for a 10 per cent reservation to citizens from general category belonging to economically weaker section of the society, in addition to already existing reservation policy for benefit of other reserved categories such as Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, Other Backward Class and physically handicapped.